


my old aches become new again

by soaringrachel



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 04:43:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2011341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soaringrachel/pseuds/soaringrachel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>they're getting the band back together. except, like, "band" means "superhero team."</p>
            </blockquote>





	my old aches become new again

**Author's Note:**

> almost exactly a month ago i got into bandom. this is the result. as such, apologies for any serious errors.
> 
> vaguely set in the same universe as my one direction superhero fic, "never never never stop for anyone," but as in our world one direction and fall out boy mostly occupy quite different corners, so there's no real overlap between the two fics.

Patrick is at the bank, signing some papers, and he starts humming under his breath, a little tune he doesn't even notice until the girl on the other side of the counter's eyes glaze over and she starts leaning toward him. He swears, sharp enough to wake her up--he hasn't fucked up like that since he was a kid. So whatever they tell the magazines, that's his first sign that something's gotta change.

He dreams about the early days, the memory diamond clear. They'd stolen a police scanner, and they'd wait, Joe's fingers staticky, Pete bouncing paper clips off Andy's bare chest. Patrick stared at the scanner, all teenage focus, until finally it buzzed with something they could use, and then they were off. In his dream they're doing that again, but Patrick is the way he is now, cheap drugstore sunglasses traded for the custom-made domino mask. Pete, his chair wobbling on two legs, is just like he used to be; when Patrick wakes up he's not sure what that means.

Awake, he knows starting again isn't like starting out, but he has the same cold fear he had back then. The same terror that if this doesn't work out he's done for. Which isn't true in any sense, not this time, but. Patrick was born to be a hero, at least in the sense that he sure wasn't born to do anything else, and here he is looking destiny in the face again. Patrick wonders, idly, if there are people whose lives are simple.

***

Pete's earliest memory is of being two, and trying to crawl into the fireplace, and burning the everloving shit out of his baby hand because apparently only his own flames didn't hurt. The rest of his life has followed the same pattern, more or less. So Fall Out Boy wasn't a thing he thought twice about, not the first time and apparently, he thinks, biting his lip hard, not the second time either. (He didn't even let Patrick sing to him while he was making the decision, just to be careful. All that willpower and he said yes in half a minute anyway.)

He sends up candy wrappers in a shower of sparks while he's on hold with the reps, because this time there are people to call, things to sign, plans to make. It makes his skin nasty-itch, to be perfectly honest. If he's going to do it he wants to fucking do it, be out there lighting bad guys on fire right the fuck now. "It worked fine the first time," he says to Patrick when his phone line is finally free again, and Patrick laughs, says, "Maybe we should go incognito again. Except you're no one's mild-mannered alter ego." Pete makes a face at the idea of being mild-mannered. Maybe there is an upside to everyone knowing who he is.

He doesn't realize Joe's gotten to the gym until he feels the spark at the nape of his neck; he swats at it and flips him the finger without looking. "Hello to you too, asshole." Andy and Patrick are already there, Andy lifting something that looks as big as Pete over his head, Patrick gargling warm salt water. Ew. Pete drops to the mat and does a front roll, because there's a mat, and they're getting back together, and he's happy. Patrick kicks him. "Right, yeah," Pete says, and calls the drill.

***

Joe digs out his earplug early at the end of a drill. It's just one of the drugstore ones they use for practice, no comms, so the signaling's imperfect, whatever, what matters is, even though Patrick shuts up as soon as he notices Joe gets an earful, and that pretty much puts paid to practice, because he's dizzy and punch-drunk, not a great state of mind for playing around with electricity. "It sounds different," Joe says, "I mean it's been fuck knows how long but I think it sounds different from last time." Patrick has wondered about that, whether his voice changes, but nobody but himself and Pete ever hears him sing and neither of them is exactly objective. There are some guys in prison he could ask, but--whatever, he's overthinking this. Patrick's voice has changed. Maybe.

The first time Patrick sang for Pete--well, there are a few ways to end that sentence, actually, because there's the time Patrick made Pete wear earplugs while he sang to a dog, so Pete could tell it worked, and the time that Pete was like "fuck it" and tore the earplugs out and his eyes widened but somehow didn't go glassy and useless, and the time that Pete called Patrick at three-thirty in the morning and Patrick, having no idea what to do, started singing without thinking and kept on for an hour. But there's the time, mostly, when Pete curled up tiny on the couch next to Patrick and asked him to sing, "because it sounds like a fucking choir of angels and I know you like doing it, dude, and what am I gonna do, follow you into hell?" Which was, Patrick had to reflect, a pretty good goddamn point.

They get a tip-off, because there are still a few Chicago cops who don't hate them, somehow, so they've got a little prep bivouac set up an hour before the Laser Gang is supposed to show up and terrorize this bank. It's basically a tent; Patrick keeps literally tripping over Pete and Joe, who are "testing" Andy's invulnerability, with fire. Patrick is gargling, because there's nothing worse than a scratchy throat cutting him off when he's surrounded by archvillains. The police radio buzzes. Forty minutes to showtime.

***

"Put on your war paint!" Pete whoops, throwing his arms around Patrick's neck and grabbing for the spirit gum. Patrick jabs him in the ribs, which is fair, but Pete still doesn't let go, making faces in the little hand mirror while Patrick puts on the domino mask. There's no real reason for it anymore, everyone knows who they are, but it looks good, Pete has to admit. He's going in barefaced, but he finds a half-melted purple lipstick in the bottom of his old job bag and streaks it across his cheeks. War paint. It's important.

They used to do it with mascara, Andy cracking the tubes open so they could get the black gunk and smear it around their eyes. Pete's not really sure it hid who they were, but it meant something to them and that was more important. When they got a few deals, a little money, they bought real face paints, and then real masks, and then all of them but Patrick quit bothering all together, but they started out cracking open tubes of Great Lash.

It's midnight by the time the bad guys show up. Pete flares up, his whole body lit for a second, and then he slips out of the tent into the night, the other three right behind him. It's a moment before the Laser Gang notices they're not alone, and then they turn around, and in the moment before Patrick opens his mouth, Pete grins wide, wide, wide in the dark parking lot.


End file.
